Reflektor
by Next to Something
Summary: Kylo Ren isn't fool enough to believe that her capture was a happy accident. If the First Order had The Girl Called Rey in custody, it is because she meant for it to happen. It was because she had a plan and this was a step in executing it. Reylo.
1. What Must Be Done

Kylo Ren isn't fool enough to believe that her capture was a happy accident. He didn't believe it was good fortune, and he believed least of all that it had anything to do with the reconnaissance skills of Hux's half-wit stormtroopers. If they have The Girl Called Rey in custody, it is because she meant for it to happen. It was because she had a plan and this was a step in executing it.

He could feel rather than see the leering smirks on the stormtrooper's faces when he had ordered she be taken to his personal chambers for questioning, but he cared little for that. Of course they were so base as to think his keeping her in his rooms had anything to do with some physical want. The truth, of course, is that he had no mind to let her out of his sight this time. He'd not more than glanced the other direction before those idiot bucketheads had armed and released her when last he had her.

Not this time.

He stopped in front of the great door that would lead him to Snoke. He was anxious to see the girl with his own two eyes, but this summons had come almost the instant after news of her capture had been brought to him. Ren thought he knew what to expect from his master, and he steeled himself for it. He held up a hand and swiped the door open.

The heat of Snoke's Great Room was always more oppressive than Kylo Ren anticipated. The room looked cold enough, but heat licked up the insides of his mask the instant he crossed the threshold. Mustafar was an unforgiving and harsh planet, and the First Order base managed to shield its inhabitants from the noxious ashen air and broiling heat. But Snoke seemed to enjoy the hot, keeping this room so one could scarcely breathe.

A fine sweat beaded on Ren's forehead, trickled annoyingly into his eyes where he couldn't reach while masked. He couldn't help but think that this discomfort was precisely the point of the stifling temperature.

"I understand that the girl has been captured."

The droning voice carried through the dry air like billowing smoke from a fire. Kylo Ren approached the dais on which his master sat, following that sooty sound. The Supreme Leader was not nearly as massive in stature as his hologram on Starkiller would have one believe, but in the flesh, his presence was tenfold potent. The absolute power that emanated off of him, shriveled husk of a creature that he was, was staggering. It humbled Ren every time he was near enough to feel it, to recognize that undiluted Darkness that rippled from his master in intoxicating waves.

It ignited a robust surge of outright jealousy in him, to sense the confidence in which his master wielded this power. How doubtlessly Snoke inhabited the Dark Side.

"Yes, Supreme Leader. She is being held in my quarters now."

Ren was close enough to see the slight shift in the Supreme Leader's craggy expression, and he suddenly felt like he had said the wrong thing.

"You quarters?" Snoke intoned. "An interesting choice for you, Kylo Ren."

Ren felt the sweat bead more heavily on his brow at his master's implication.

"I would expect such crudeness from General Hux, but you, I thought…" His master's great voice trailed off, though not without intent. The Supreme Leader did not abandon his words lightly, and neither did he speak without careful thought behind each syllable.

"Forgive me, master. I have the girl sequestered there out of simple mistrust of Hux's men's capability to secure a prisoner so powerful as her. You remember what happened last time she-"

There was a searing, piercing pain that bloomed behind the bridge of his nose, cutting Ren's words short.

"I do not need reminding of her previous escape." Snoke's words were cool though biting. A phantom finger seemed to brush over the scar cleaving Ren's face beneath his mask. "And neither do you."

"Forgive me," Ren said again before falling silent. He stared hard at the stone floor.

"You know what must be done with the girl," Snoke continued after a heavy moment of quiet. "You know, and yet you hesitate." A sound that might be a laugh from a creature with a sense of humor rattled from Snoke. "You want me to tell you to do it, you weak thing."

Shame flared over Ren's scalp. Every encouragement he had known from Snoke had been seasoned with humbling derision, from the first moment of his surrender to the Supreme Leader. But since the destruction of Starkiller at the hands of Han Solo and the blasted Resistance, this derision was no longer a footnote but a bullet point. Ren deserved no better than the scathing reproach of his master, but it flayed the meat from his bones all the same.

"The girl must die," Ren said, his voice too loud through the modulator of his mask. The crackle of it sounded like snapping kindling in the fire that was the Great Room. "I will see to her execution personally."

A humming sound of perverse pleasure wafted from where Snoke sat and Ren dared to raise his gaze from the floor.

"Very good. You will extract what you can from her, of course. She is bound to be useful for some information. But do not waste your energy on her, Kylo Ren. I will not risk your compassion for her twisting the path on which I have set you. She will not best you again."

Ren regretted looking up to meet the gaze of Snoke for the ridicule he found there.

* * *

The film of sweat on his body had begun to dry in the cool air of the antechamber that led to his rooms. He wavered before opening the door to his quarters, but he wasn't entirely certain as to why. Snoke's cool insouciance over the fate of the girl was nothing Ren hadn't experienced before. Would that _he_ could always be so blasé about the deaths of others. And the Supreme Leader's mockery of Ren's past weakness was not unexpected or unearned.

But something was keeping him from opening the door to the room that held the Scavenger. Perhaps it was the anticlimactic end to his year-long pursuit of her-she was captured in an unrelated mission off-world and would likely fall to his lightsaber once he'd gleaned what information he could from her.

Such was a paltry way to end what had, in the beginning, seemed to be a worthy divertissement, but the time for naive offers of tutelage in the snow of a dying world was passed. It would seem the girl was not meant for such greatness as he had imagined.

He swiped the door open with a decided air of indifference.

Once the sitting room of his quarters was visible to him, a barrage of startling images assaulted him in rapid succession. The room was a wreck, for one, with items from the shelves scattered and broken along the floor. The next was that the girl appeared to be strung up from the ceiling instead of bound to an interrogation chair as expected. This was probably partially how the room had become so thoroughly ransacked: she was swinging from the her chains and kicking wildly at any solid surface her unbound feet encountered. The last realization that occurred to him before he stilled her flailing body with a surge of the Force was that she was very nearly nude.

Her face was livid and her breaths were coming in ragged pants. Her eyes focused on him in pure ire as he took in the scene with a keener eye.

She had been bound by the wrists to a long chain suspended from his ceiling. The dirty footprint smudges on the brushed durasteel ceiling suggested that she had managed to invert herself once free of supervision and had tried to yank the chain from the ceiling. Failing that, she had apparently taken to trying to either kick down something to use to free or defend herself with from his shelves, or had dissolved into panicked thrashing at her realization of her captivity.

Or she wanted to supremely piss Kylo Ren off.

She was still now, her back bowed and her body not quite limp at the end of her chain from his Forcing her still. She was stretched to her full extent, her toes only just curling on the floor.

He eased his hold on her when he noticed the crumpled pile of rags now scattered along the floor. She hadn't been captured in her chest band and underwear.

She had been stripped.

He turned his back on her, a flush that had nothing to do with want flaming up his neck to ring in his ears. The wide expanses of her naked skin burned into his thoughts though he willed them away. Utter fury was close on these images' heels.

Without thinking, he reached to the release mechanism of his mask and pulled it from his head. The rush of cool air to his damp scalp centered him for the barest of moments so he might be able to speak.

"I will release you, and you will remain calm."

She didn't answer him, so he turned back to face her.

The girl's face was set in defiance and he forced himself to notice only that. The hate and purest anger that burned in those eyes. He spoke again.

"I will release you, and you will remain calm."

He did not try to manipulate her with some sort of mind trick. He wanted nothing to do with her mind at the moment, and would spare no energy for its handling. If she would not listen to him, he knew he could overpower her bodily easily enough.

Ren eased his grasp on her until her body hung more freely from the chain and he waited until her feet were securely under her before waving the manacles at her wrists free.

She fell lightly to the flats of her feet and raised her hands as if ready to spar. She looked wild in nothing but her underthings, filthy and bloody from her struggles since being captured. Harder since he had last seen her. He held her gaze for another long moment before pulling the heavy black cloak from his shoulders.

She tensed, her hands flexing a fraction and her weight shifting to the balls of her feet.

He threw the cloak to her.

"Cover yourself."

She fumbled with the cloak in her arms, her steely look morphing to startled confusion.

"The stormtroopers," he demanded as she struggled with the mass of black fabric in her hands. "Did they strip you down like this?"

Her mouth was still a tight line as she slowly started to wrap the cloak about her, her look that of utter distrust.

"Answer me, girl!"

This roused her and that stiffness returned to her posture as she spoke for the the first time. "They did."

He nodded curtly, needing little confirmation beyond this. He remembered the shift in the demeanor of two stormtroopers in particular, and he knew without a doubt that they were responsible for this disgusting scene in his sitting room.

"Did they take any other liberties?"

She was wrapped in the cloak fully now, the excess fabric pooling on the floor at her feet. The white tips of her fingers peeked out the front of it as she clutched it closed around her. Her brows knitted at his question.

He gesture vaguely at her body, and her confused expression uncoiled.

"No."

He nodded again. "The better for them. They will die a quick death for this; anything further would require a more lengthy punishment."

Her mouth dropped open and her confused expression returned. "You're going to kill them?"

He took a moment to recognize how odd this whole affair had been thus far, how wholly different he thought his next meeting with the girl would be. "Well, not me personally, no. Such things are beneath my rank. But they will die."

Her head shook in bewilderment-a small but powerful gesture.

"You'd have me spare them? The imbeciles who strung you up like a butcher strings up a carcass to bleed?"

"I-I…" Her head continued to shake, and her grip on the robe loosened to reveal one tanned shoulder. This exposure of her skin jolted him and he stood straighter.

"They are simple creatures. They are not worth your...compassion."

She fell still again, her eyes downcast. He took notice of the bruises blooming beneath the skin of her cheek then, the raw scrapes on her neck from being stripped against her will. Her hair was matted with blood and fell in haggard clumps from her mostly fallen buns.

Without much thought, he said, "You're filthy."

Her eyes shot up at him again, angry and hard. He was surprised at how quickly she fell to anger, had been surprised by this before. Such violent shifts in mood weren't ideal for a Jedi in training; this he knew personally.

"The 'fresher is through there," he motioned. "You should clean yourself up." He considered her for a moment, then the trashed room. His few belongings scattered along the floor-odd bits of mechanical pieces, little things he had built to steady his mind when he felt most torn, odd artifacts he had picked up from planets long destroyed. Many were broken or streaked with her blood, but he found that he didn't much care. "Take as long as you like," he continued when he brought his gaze back to hers. "What comes next won't be enjoyable."

She tugged the cloak closer around her slight body and she backed a step away from him.

"If my admission that those that disgraced you like this are soon to be dead wasn't enough to quell you, perhaps you, too, are a simple creature." He speared a hand through his hair, and watched as she took great notice of this gesture. "I have no desire to fuck you," he finished slowly, deliberately.

He pointed again at the door to the 'fresher. "Go. Stop bleeding on my floor."

She looked at him for a moment longer, and he thought again how queer this all was. Wondered at his insistence that she wash herself, and take her time doing so, before he extracted the information she undoubtedly carried with her. The door clicked quietly shut behind her as she scurried away to the 'fresher and he saw that she left bloody footprints in her wake.

He looked again at the mess she had made of his quarters. A small smile tugged at his lips, slow and stiff from disuse, and he scrubbed his hand over his mouth in frustration. He stalked to the panel at the far wall to summon a service droid to take care of this mess while the girl was indisposed. He looked down, nudging a scrap of fabric that used to be her clothes with the toe of his boot, and thought of interrogating her in nothing but his cloak. He shook the thought from his head and sent an order through for a change of clothes for her as well.

Ren glanced toward the door to the 'fresher. She was being oddly quiet. Though he had told her to take as long as she wanted, he hadn't meant for her to simply hide away in there for the rest of the night. Or, more foolishly, try to escape.

He strode purposefully to the door but stopped himself just before swiping the door open.

She had had enough of that kind of humiliation for one day.

He rapped a leather-clad knuckle sharply against the door and waited. When he didn't hear anything, he knocked again.

There was another long moment of silence in which Ren considered just opening the door, her privacy be damned, when a small voice answered from the other side: "Come in."

There was a feeling of relief that she hadn't done anything stupid while alone in the 'fresher that pulsed through him, followed quickly by frustration at his own stupidity for letting that be a possibility. He wanted her in his chambers so he could keep an eye on her, and the first thing he had done was send her to a room alone. There were no malleable stormtroopers or spare weaponry in his 'fresher, but the point stood.

He opened the door and saw her standing, still wrapped in his cloak, in the middle of the small room. A quick look around revealed that she hadn't attempted anything obvious in the way of escape, but he also saw that her underthings were neatly folded and stacked on the edge of the sink. Heat pricked the tips of his ears and he looked back to the girl.

"Is there a problem?"

She tipped up her chin. She worked so hard to look strong, to hold tight to that damnable defiance, even when standing in his 'fresher with nothing protecting her but his own robe. Something about this, about all of this, tugged again at the corners of his mouth, willing a smile for which he had no use. It was very irritating.

"I don't know how to turn it on," she said, her chin still lifted. As if admitting to being ignorant of the controls of a shower were not a laughable indignity.

"The shower? The controls are-"

"No," she cut in. She fumbled under his cloak for a moment, as if trying to extract a hand without revealing any other parts of her body. She finally settled for letting the cloak drop down over a shoulder again and pulled out a long, finely muscled arm. "The…" she gestured. "The bath."

Ren looked to the large, deep, square bathtub at which her steady finger was pointing, and realization dawned. "You want to take a bath?"

Her mouth tightened and Ren noticed that the skin around her cuts and bruises on her face had grown a shade more livid and red. "I've not had one before." Her voice was strong, devoid of shame.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You have never had a bath?"

The redness of her face intensified as she blew out a frustrated huff of air. "I've had a bath before! Just not...a hot one. In a proper tub." She was quiet for a moment more, and when she spoke again, that impatient spike to her words was dulled again. "I think I am going to die soon; I think that you are going to kill me, so I want to have a hot bath before I do."

Ren felt her words like a blaster hit, sharp in his gut. His inclinations to smile at her pride and defiance wiped from him as he considered her cold acceptance of her own death. While not entirely glad to see the girl again, he was intrigued by her presence and not a little anxious to learn more about the last year of her life. Her statement also gave him momentary pause, as he had been very sure that she was not here on the First Order base by accident. She straightened her shoulders and pulled her naked arm back into the cloak, and the doubt vanished.

Anyone who could face him in so pitiful a state as this and still find the wherewithal to stare him boldly in the face, to announce their intention of a small comfort before dying, was not the sort to be captured so easily.

He didn't believe it, and he was going to find out why.

Not taking his eyes from her, he used his teeth to tug his glove from his right hand. She did lower her gaze then, only for a moment, before looking up again, her mouth set in a tighter line than before.

"The taps are controlled by this sensor," he said as he bent and tapped two fingers on an, admittedly discreet, black pad along the edge of the tub. Water poured from the elongated faucet in a small waterfall. "You adjust the temperature like this."

He dragged his fingers across the pad and steam immediately rose from the rush of water.

"I assume you can work out the stopper at the bottom," he added.

"I'll manage," she bit out, her annoyance clipping her voice once again.

Straightening back to his full height, he began to tug his glove back on again. "I'm going to leave the door cracked so I can hear if you have anymore...difficulties."

"You're too kind," she replied in that same sarcastic tone that had listed the specs of a BB unit the first time she was his...guest. His scalp itched at the recollection, and he left her to her bath. Once the door was mostly closed and he had turned his back on the room, he heard the faint disturbance of water as she climbed into the bath.

He suddenly wanted to be nowhere near this girl and the small pleasures she took in her last moments.

The service droid had arrived while he was attending to her and Ren was please to see that the room was neat again, if lacking in items on the shelves. He took a seat farthest from the door to the 'fresher and tried to not hear the small splashing noises coming from the crack in the door.

This is not how he imagined their next meeting, he thought again. The word _compassion_ flitted across his mind once more, and he inwardly cringed to think what Snoke would have to say of his treatment of the prisoner thus far. Would his master have approved of his leaving her strung to his ceiling, nearly naked and struggling for escape?

Probably more than he would of his offering her his own clothes for cover and a hot bath.

But forcing the girl into anything had proven a disastrous tactic in the past, he reasoned. It was not out of compassion that he was...civil to her. It was an effort to get what he needed from her in the least destructive way possible. His hand drifted to the scar on his face, the hard welt of skin roping over the line of his jaw noticeable even through his leather gloves.

A particularly loud splash sounded from the 'fresher followed by a warbling, humming refrain from a song Ren had never heard before. He scrubbed his hands over his face before slapping them down onto the arms of his chair. Singing in the bath was too much.

He stalked over to the door and the noises inside stopped abruptly. He opened his mouth to command her to stop humming, to hurry things along. But her soft song started again and he found that he couldn't voice the order. He went instead to the panel on the wall and typed in an order for food for the girl. His finger hesitated on the choice of basic rations, bland proteins and cold energy cubes. Her song changed to something higher and lilting, and he chose instead a hot meal that he most favored.

Once the order had been sent through and confirmed, he smashed the screen with a punishing blow of his fist.


	2. Worthy

Kylo was idly picking fine splinters of glass out of the thin leather of his gloves and the thinner skin of his knuckles when the door pinged for the service droid. He took the hot meal from it and wondered what to do with the neat pile of clothing that had been brought for the girl. He should just walk into the 'fresher and place the clothes on the worktop. What use was privacy to a prisoner soon to die?

But he couldn't make himself slide the door open any further than the few inches it was at present. Hearing her sing and softly splash in the bath seemed absurdly intimate already, sent embarrassed heat to the tips of his ears, but to see her fully, so painfully thin and sinewed, so vulnerable… That was something he was certain that he didn't want.

He ground his bleeding knuckles against the wall, willing that pain to surface afresh. He _should_ want to see her vulnerable. He should have no qualms over her discomfort, this girl who, with the training he had so foolishly offered, could have stepped into her strike and cleaved his head from his shoulders, rather than just forever marking him with his own folly. He should want to make her suffer.

But he laid the clothes neatly outside the door, instead. "There's a change of clothes here," he said. "And food, though that's getting cold."

Her soft humming ceased.

"I thought you said I could take as long as I liked."

His mouth pinched over that damnable inclination to smile at her quiet defiance. "I did. But runyip is awful cold."

There was another long beat of silence. "All right."

He backed quickly away from the door and sat himself again in the far chair. His eyes shot to the ceiling when he saw a thin, damp arm reach through the crack of the door to grab the clothes, but this only brought his attention back to the footprint smudges left there from the girl's earlier struggle. Kylo squeezed his eyes shut with a groan.

He'd gone about this all wrong. He'd been weak, again. He should have left her strung to his ceiling, pulled the information she undoubtedly possessed from her mind and been done with it. Killed her while she was chained. Left the mess for the service droid.

There was a great many things that Kylo Ren should have done, and he knew, as the girl stepped out into his sitting room with wet, loose hair wearing a too-large tunic and too-long pants, that it was far too late to try to do them now.

"Food is on the table," he said in what he hoped was a bored tone.

She nodded and padded silently over to the table. She wasn't given any socks, and something about the sight of her pale, slender bare feet propelled him from his chair. He paced the length of the sitting room, pinching the ragged skin of his knuckles in punishing twists.

He noticed in his quick glances at her that the girl ate carefully, slowly. Her bites were too large and he could tell that she must be practically starved, but still she ate with a control that he was angry to admire. He seated himself heavily opposite her, his unlit saber gripped in his hand. He slammed this hand onto the table and the weapon clanked noisily against her tray.

"Is this the part where you ask me about the droid?" she asked once she swallowed.

"It's been a year, Scavenger. We know what that droid could have told us." Her own silence in that interrogation room was implied in the tightness of his words. "Ahch-To has been under surveillance for months. Luke Skywalker is nowhere on its surface."

The girl continued to eat, cutting her food into smaller and smaller pieces before bringing the bites to her mouth. She seemed aware that the meal couldn't last forever and was making an apparent effort to elongate it as much as possible. Perhaps she wasn't entirely fearless, afterall.

"But I have a feeling you already knew that."

She didn't look up, seeming completely engrossed in trying to gather the remaining gravy on the plate into her spoon.

He reached across the table and lifted the edge of the plate, pooling the gravy at its edge. She hesitated before scooping up this last bite, scraping the spoon gratingly across the plate.

"Would you like another?"

She did look up at this and Kylo could see her embarrassment painting its truth across her cheeks.

He stood, tucking his saber into his belt, and walked to the wall panel. He cursed when he remembered that he'd ruined it with his previous outburst and hissed in pain as he peeled off his gloves, the action tearing his knuckles further. The girl had somehow managed to not destroy his holopad in her earlier flailing and he tapped around on the screen to send through the order for another meal.

"Why were you on Manda?" he asked once he set the holopad back on the shelf.

She didn't answer, so he pulled out the hilt of his weapon again. Laid it on the table between them before sitting down.

"Why were you at the Archives?" he tried again.

She touched a finger to the plate, picking up a crumb, and sucked the finger into her mouth. No use trying to disguise that hunger now. "Why does anyone go to the Archives? I wanted to learn."

Kylo scoffed. "I thought you had a teacher."

The girl looked boldly across at him and he took in the sight of her. She did not look well kept by his once-master. She looked like she had when Kylo had first met her. A scavenger, half-starved and reckless. Impossibly older than the work of a year should weather a face. He didn't know if her hair was longer; he'd only ever seen it pulled back before. But he imagined that it was now that he saw it in damp tendrils around her face, that she had not lived in such a way that allowed for such luxuries as haircuts and regular meals.

"Where is Luke Skywalker?" he asked, belatedly realizing that this should have been his first question.

She didn't look away as she said, "I don't know."

He raised his eyebrows at that, though he wasn't sure if he was actually surprised. "You don't?"

She shook her head. "No."

"And why not? We gathered intelligence that you were with him shortly after the destruction of Starkiller."

"I was. I trained with him on...Ahch-To." Her voice was halting, as if afraid to give something away. As if saying this planet's name out loud were a dangerous thing, even though Kylo had already confirmed that he knew of it. As if she were being careful with her words. She could not be so careful with her mind, and Kylo lifted his hand from the table, preparing to nudge his way inside.

"I ran away," the girl said suddenly, stopping Kylo before he could send his energy toward her.

He stared at her for a long moment, looking away only when the door pinged. He retrieved the meal from the droid and considered holding this comfort hostage from her until she was more free with her answers, until she spoke in more than clipped, perfunctory sentences.

"Why did you run away, scavenger?" He asked as he approached the table.

She didn't eye the meal like its withholding would break her, but rather looked smoothly at him in a way that almost made him wish that he hadn't shed his mask upon entering the room.

"Why did _you_?"

That smile he had been biting back all evening curled slowly from one side of his mouth to the other. He watched as the effect he expected settled over her and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat before finally looking down. He took away the empty tray from beneath her downcast eyes and placed the refreshed one in its place.

"You are clever. I've long known that. Though I'd wager that your reasons for running from Luke Skywalker differ quite a bit from my own."

Something like, "You'd be surprised." mumbled from her before she began to tuck into the hot plate of food, eating with a touch less care than before. He watched her, feeling a bit hungry himself, but he reasoned that though his...soft tactics had thus far proven somewhat effective, he doubted that sharing a meal with her would bolster her feeling of cooperation in the face of danger. He instead settled into a short meditation to refocus him, to draw his thoughts from hunger and the warmth her quiet noises of hurriedly chewing and swallowing kindled in him. Her eyes shot up at the shift of energy about him and he allowed another small grin. Something about this gesture disarmed her, and he made note that smiling at her might be a useful tactic in the future.

A feeling like revulsion clutched in his stomach as he realized that any future with this girl was not to last beyond the next few hours, and his smile fell away.

"I don't believe you, you know," Kylo stated as she finished her second plate. She tilted the plate up as he had earlier to catch the remains of gravy. "I don't think that you ran away. I don't believe that you don't know the whereabouts of Skywalker, and I seriously doubt that you are anything like me."

She sighed and pushed the cleaned tray a few inches away.

"Look for yourself, then, if you don't believe me."

This surprised him. She knew what it was like to have someone in her mind, knew what that violation felt like. And last time...he had not been kind. He had been so taken by the blinding brightness of her mind, by the quivering wealth of power she held untapped there, that he had looked at things he shouldn't have, things that he didn't need to. Things that had no bearing on finding the droid or Luke Skywalker. He had looked at her life, shriveled thing that it was, and he had goaded her with it until she felt spurred to fight back. All because he felt compelled to look, and he did. That was a particular flavor of powerlessness, to be stripped of the last privacy available to any one person, and Kylo knew its taste all too well.

To freely offer this access to him raised his suspicions considerably.

"Very well."

He pushed.

She wasn't so vibrant this time, her mind was not so blinding and damn near painful to navigate, to transgress. It was cluttered and fractured, dim and withered. _What had happened to her?_ He saw her capture on Manda, saw the supposed reason for her apprehension: her own pitiful resignation. A surrender that came entirely too soon. He saw her flight from Ahch-To, and felt her bitter resentment that tanged like blood at the back of his tongue.

He followed that image further and found an unwilling teacher, hard and cold as the stones jutting from the scrubby grass of the island. Skywalker was a changed man from the idealistic uncle Kylo had known. The girl had to pull wisdom from him in inches, suffer at his silence, and go to sleep at night under the weight of dozens of unanswered questions.

It made sense, why she left; why she sought the Archives of Baobab. It made sense, and so he did not trust it.

He took a hard turn that drew a gasp from the girl. He could both see her and not see her sitting across the table from him, her hands gripping the sides of the table and her eyes unfocused. The reality of her was like a faint watermark over the images he filed through, looking for something she was trying to hide.

He saw a young girl crouched in the oxidized corpse of an AT-AT, bright red blood on her fingertips. Her hands were shaking and Kylo could see the source of the blood, and why this memory was so tender. It flooded her bed from between her legs, and he could feel her absolute terror in the face of a painful death as wrenching cramps seized her belly, black blood and clots smeared on her inner thighs. He felt her hunger as she saved her portions for days to go see the medicine woman in the faded tent at the outpost. He experienced the tight grip of shame as the woman explained the blood, the pain, and handed the portions back to the girl, along with lengths of thick cotton for her to use as sanitary protection against her courses.

He was aware that the girl across from him was crying as he watched this younger version of herself burn her thin pallet in the sand outside of her makeshift home, ruinous, gored stains and the stench of old blood making it impossible to keep. She pushed him away from this memory as he saw the beginnings of weeks spent on the hard floor until she was able to salvage another thin mattress from another picked-over starship.

This reminder of his strength over hers fresh and hard, he went again to her memories of Ahch-To, looked for what else there was to see. He saw her anger, outbursts not unlike his own. On her face was terror and doubt as she begged Skywalker for assurance that she wasn't fated for the Dark, that he could teach her to pull away from this.

But Skywalker had no confidence in troubled students anymore. And he gave her no peace.

Pain began to bloom at the bridge of his nose as he dug deeper, intent on shuffling through every moment of her past year, and he found more and more the deeper he looked. The girl was weakening, and she wasn't able to keep much from him. She was so ashamed of her temper, of her impatience. She missed her friends terribly, and resented them somewhat, however ridiculous the emotion, for not being there with her. She felt weak at having grown used to companionship, and angry that Luke would not give it to her. She lamented the loss of her former self, who could meticulously dig through a thrice scavenged wreck and find enough to feed her for the next week. Who was fine enough alone with only the company of the stars and a battered helmet to keep her sane.

 _Where had that self-sufficient girl gone? What had taken that steadfastness from her?_ she often wondered.

Faces Kylo recognized flashed past his mind's eye and he experienced her confusion at both loving these people-Finn, General Organa, Poe Dameron-and hating them in the same breath for ruining who she knew herself to be.

All this, and yet there was nothing more than the ragged memories of a girl interrupted to find. Nothing that would lead him to Skywalker or to anyone of value within the Resistance. Nothing of any real worth.

He withdrew.

It was done, then.

The girl flinched as he took away her tray and set it aside with the other. She was trying to be quiet in her crying, but the wet sound of her breaths was unmistakable. He wanted the girl from before back, as well. It gnawed at him to see what shambles her mind had been reduced to, to see that this bravery she still projected was not much more than a facade.

Her weeping slowed as he took his seat across from her again and he sat in silence waiting for her to collect herself. When she finally looked up, her eyes were red but steady and her mouth was set against the tremors that still threatened there.

"Can you tell me nothing else about the Resistance or the current location of Luke Skywalker?" His voice sounded dead, and indeed, he felt pretty damn lifeless. He was aware that he was inhabiting the last moments of this girl's life and he couldn't banish the thought of what he had just pulled from her. What was now, inevitably, sitting right at the surface of her mind. The sadness she was made to relive in the last hour of her life. "Nothing at all?"

She shook her head, and he felt nearly certain that this was her pitiful truth. Maybe he had considered her capture a part of a larger plan before, but now his doubt clouded that. He had scraped the very bottom of her mind, drawn every ounce of intelligence she could have possessed-which was fair little. It wasn't possible that the wet faced girl now curling in on herself had been able to keep anything from him, and he felt sore disappointment in overestimating her capability for machinations and intrigue.

"You realize your life is worth very little right now."

This seemed to strike her as an almost physical blow, and it took Kylo a moment to realize why. He saw the disappointed face of Luke Skywalker, heard the decayed mantra of a person stripped of their confidence. The girl agreed with him.

He stood and drew his saber again from his belt. Her eyes did not follow him and she did not flinch at the whumping pulse of its ignition.

She said something in a voice so soft he didn't hear it over the sizzling crackle of his lightsaber, all the worse for wear since their battle in the snow of Starkiller. Without his gloves, the heat of the hilt was almost unbearable, and he used this pain to fuel his resolve.

"Stand up."

She did, but she spoke again, louder this time. "I don't want to die."

Kylo Ren laughed. It was a cruel gesture and the noise sounded vulgar from his lips. But he couldn't fathom how this slip of a girl with no happiness but what a full belly could bring still wanted so desperately to live that she would announce it over the flare of his saber. There was still some bravery in her, the little chit. That surprise at her happy contradictions washed over him again and seasoned his laughter to something hard and regretful.

"You have to show me something, girl." His voice was too loud, augmented by his pain as well as his desperation. He didn't want to kill her, he realized. She was surprising and broken and brave. Contrary in the face of relief from the sad chore of living. It seemed a kriffing waste to kill her, but he needed more than surprising fearlessness. "I need you to show me what your life is worth."

They were cruel words, but the world Kylo knew was not kind. The world that might save this girl was not kind. It could do far worse than demand she demonstrate her value, and if she did, it likely would.

Her hand glowed faintly red in the light of his lit weapon as she lifted it over the table. Her hand hovered over her water cup from her dinner and a look of concentration hardened her face. The cup rose off the tray, slow and very controlled.

Kylo sighed. It was nothing more than a paltry padawan trick; one he, too, would have been proud of accomplishing after less than a year of study. But it wasn't nearly enough to save her.

"Is that all?" he asked as he shifted his saber infinitesimally closer to her, his resignation already heavy in his voice.

Her eyes shot sharply to his and he felt the absurd compulsion to take a step away. She looked at him with something like defiance, like confidence. Something like power. Then he felt the pulse of energy.

All around him, things began to slowly rise. What few things were left on his shelves, the chairs, the table, and every item on the table in their own separate ascent. All slow and controlled and with what seemed to be very little effort from the scavenger. He looked beyond her into the 'fresher and saw the taps of the sink, the shower, even the bathtub that she had previously not known how to operate all spurt steaming water while his small collection of toiletries lifted from the worktops and sides of the tub. A glance to his bedroom, the door of which was barely ajar, showed him that, even in this room of which she knew nothing, any item that was not bolted to the floor was beginning a slow ascent from their rightful places. The lights of his rooms began to flicker and even the sparks from his saber seemed to bend to this energy.

When he turned his wondering gaze back to her, her face still held that note of challenge, of daring, and yet this feat seemed to not affect her at all. What confidence he had had in her weakness was beginning to crumble, and he wondered in almost frightened confusion why this girl, this woman, who seeped power from her very pores, had bent so easily to him. Whether he had actually seen the depths of her mind.

Before he could complete this thought, she turned her outstretched hand over, and everything that she held in the air began to slowly drift back down. The water stopped pouring from the taps and the lights steadied. She added her other hand to this, upturned as if waiting for something to land in them.

Kylo Ren shut off his lightsaber as he watched his helmet drift from its shelf and brush past him, touching him lightly on the arm as it moved as if on a track to the girl's waiting hands. It settled softly into her, and she held it out to him in an offer he didn't know that she had the power to make.

He should kill her. He should kill her right now, watch her blood spatter on the visor of his own helm that she held so reverently in her hands. He should end this trickster who wore sadness like he wore his mask and who hid power he couldn't imagine in the spaces between her fragile bones.

She was a danger, and his fascination with her was going to ruin everything.

He yanked the helmet from her hands and was pushing it roughly onto his head as he made to exit his chamber, scraping the hard metal sharply against the rough scar tissue on his cheek. He thought briefly of restraining the girl but damn near laughed at the thought. _What would be the fucking point? Had her struggle with the bonds at her wrists been an act as well?_

Just as the door swiped open, her voice called from behind him. "Where are you going?"

He sighed, a heavy sound through his mask's modulator.

"I'm going to talk to the Supreme Leader."


	3. Spoiled Little Thing

Kylo Ren wasn't sure what he was going to say to Supreme Leader Snoke. He didn't often visit his master when not summoned directly, and never so late in a day cycle. He wondered detachedly if Snoke slept, or ate, or indeed left the room beyond this door. He was a living creature, under all that power, and Kylo supposed it would follow that he would perform such mundane tasks as these.

Kylo shook the absurd thoughts from his head, reaching a hand out to open the door. He was stalling, and he knew it; he was afraid to go to his master. Snoke had given him a singular task and had already commanded against that which he was coming to request. Kylo knew that whatever discussion awaited him beyond this door, it was not to be pleasant.

 _Come in, Kylo Ren._

The Supreme Leader's voice spiked through Kylo's mind, a slicing intrusion that took no care for the mind it invaded. It was not from Snoke that Kylo had learned his more gentle methods of navigating the thoughts of others, but rather they were a form of self-preservation that he perfected on his own. To see inside, he learned, one did not _have_ to cut the thing open. The fact that Snoke disregarded these niceties was very telling of his master's superior mental fortitude.

 _I know why you are here,_ came his master's voice again, and Kylo swiped the door open.

That heat hit him again, brought him quickly from the calm cool of the hallway to the weight of his current mission.

"I know why you are here," Snoke said again, his great voice filling the sweltering room. "Though, I would have you say it out loud yourself. How will you defend your insubordination?"

"Master-"

The pain that shot through Kylo Ren was like lightning up his spine. His knees gave way beneath him and his breath punched out of him like a blaster shot.

"I am your master, Kylo Ren, and you would do well to remember it." His voice was like the clap of thunder that heralded the storm. "I sent you from here with the explicit order to kill the girl. Now, tell me why she lives?"

Kylo took in a shaking breath but remained on the floor, kneeling before the cruel being on the dais. Any amount of supplication would surely only aid his cause. "She has great power, Master. I have seen it. I did not think it was wise to-"

Kylo knew the moment the words left his lips that they were the incorrect ones, and that flash of pain shot through him again.

"You thought it unwise? Are you suddenly more knowledgeable than your Supreme Leader? Tell the truth!"

The modulator of his mask was crackling with each of his labored breaths. Kylo realized that he'd bitten through his lip and the blood from this was draining into the delicate mechanism that transformed his voice into something more formidable than can be achieved by flesh alone. When he spoke, the modulator popped and hissed as it shorted.

"It would be a waste to snuff such power-!" His words were lost in an anguished groan. Kylo felt that impact again, that pain borne of his own nerves set against him in agonizing treason. That was the worst part of Snoke's methods: it was Kylo's own body that supplied the pain, that bent to the Force of Snoke. It was only what his body was capable of withstanding, and the fact that it crippled him so thoroughly was almost as excruciating as the jolts of power.

 _Tell the truth._

That knife in his mind again, butchering his thoughts.

"She is like me, Master! Sh-she is unstable, but monstrously powerful. Were you not wise in kindling my abilities, in harnessing them for the Dark Side, rather than destroying it along with those others whom I killed?"

Snoke chuckled, that humorless noise that ran an impossible chill over Kylo's feverish skin.

"Clever boy. Appealing to my vanity. Though-" another dose of pain, one that had Kylo spurting the blood from his ruined lip over the inside of his mask's visor-"I know it is still not the truth. Do tell me. I don't enjoy this."

His master's voice held little warmth and he found that he did not believe him. Kylo fumbled with the release mechanism of the mask, the blood covered visor blinding him and rippling a claustrophobic panic over his twitching muscles. Once free, he gulped greedy lungfuls of hot, ashen air like it were purest oxygen.

"Why is the girl alive, Kylo Ren?"

The gentleness of Snoke's words paralyzed Kylo where he lay, crumpled and utterly spent. He knew then that if his next words weren't correct, they might also be his last.

"Be-because I want her to be alive." He swallowed, more blood than anything else, and his empty stomach turned. "That is the simple truth. Because I want it."

There was a long silence in which Kylo only breathed, waiting for the ending of his life, or the painful burden of its continuance.

"Spoiled little thing."

It was only when the pressure dissipated that Kylo realized that Snoke had been forcing him down to the ground. Its lifting gave him the freedom of his first deep breath in some minutes, and the movement was more painful than therapeutic.

"Have I not given you everything? Have you wanted for nothing these fifteen years? I saved you, Kylo Ren, from the wasted life to which Luke Skywalker would have confined you."

Kylo nodded against the hot grit of the floor, the blood oozing from his lip made sticky with the grime smearing onto his cheek. Shame washed over him as he listened to his master. As he understood. "Yes, Supreme Leader. You have been good to me."

"And yet you want? You are ungrateful. Unworthy of your place as Master of the Knights of Ren."

Kylo squeezed his eyes shut at this accusation. Felt compelled to assure his master that the girl was as good as dead. This time, he would do what was asked of him because it was right, and not question it.

But the words wouldn't come. He lightly chewed on his injured lip, igniting fresh pain for this weakness. He couldn't say it, even knowing that he was wrong and that the Supreme Leader was right.

He was worthless.

Kylo almost welcomed the pain of his master's entry into his mind, then. It was no less than what he deserved. He witnessed in agonizing clarity his release of the girl from her chains, his activating the taps of the bathtub for her. Handing her his favorite meal while she sat there with wet hair and bare feet. It was with great care that he shielded Snoke from his glimpse into the girl's mind, those private memories he had plucked like petals from a wilting flower. Only those memories that would save her, her conflict, her frustration, did he let past the silent wall he built.

And Snoke saw her tell Kylo that she didn't want to die. Saw her lift every loose thing in his quarters with little more than a shifting of fingers.

"You are a fool." Snoke exited Kylo's mind, leaving a pulsing absence in his wake. "I am ever an indulgent master, when it comes to you. It would seem that you are not the only weak creature in this room." Kylo closed his eyes at the words, afraid to hope and afraid his emotions would show plainly on his naked face.

"You may keep her," Snoke said simply, his tone clipped and punishing.

Kylo didn't know whether to be relieved or all the more terrified. Something else was on the heels of this allowance, and he knew it would not bode well for him or the girl.

"You may keep her, but you must test her. You know pain, Kylo Ren." Cool, spectral fingers seemed to trail through his hair, though they brought no comfort. "You know a life infused with it. That is the life she'll share with you, if you want her."

Kylo knew then what his Master would have him do to test her. How he would have her measured. It would either do what he could not and kill her outright, or, worse yet, bind her to him forever. His stomach, filled with blood and bile, heaved again and he was neatly sick next to his discarded helmet.

"I am your master, but I am still your teacher," Snoke continued when Kylo's stomach was spent. "I will let you have her, but for the lessons you will learn from it. If she is what you think, you will learn how damnable it is to shape power into a useful thing. You will learn the agony of creating a diamond from worthless coal, as I have." He paused, and Kylo felt compelled for the first time since entering the room to look up into the face of his master. He watched that sunken mouth pronounce his damnation in slow, deliberate syllables. "If she is not, if she has again deceived you, my dutiful son, you will die. If this girl threatens our goals, I will kill you, if she doesn't kill you first."

"Y-yes, Supreme Leader."

Kylo managed to stand, to dip a painful bow, and make his way to the door that would lead him away from this experiment in torture.

"Do not bring her before me," Snoke called from behind him. Kylo paused, though he did not think he had the strength to turn and face the Supreme Leader again. "Indeed, don't reveal to her that I am on-world. I am not so naive as you, Kylo Ren, to believe a broken mirror."

* * *

After staggering from Snoke's great room, his helmet dangling from his fingers, Kylo collapsed against the cool durasteel wall of the hallway. With shaking fingers he wiped at the drying blood from the lenses of his visor. The vision in his right eye was somewhat blurred and he hadn't realized its dull throbbing until he sat in the quiet of a military base mostly sleeping.

The girl had been pardoned, in a sense. But had he doomed her to a fate much worse than a quick slash with a lightsaber, freshly bathed and recently fed? He pushed the mask back on his head and stood on unsteady legs. He pulled what little strength he could from his connection with the Force and made confident strides to his quarters.

The stormtroopers he had curtly assigned to stand guard by his door stood still and undisturbed, and Kylo took some comfort in this. It was likely, then, that the girl had not escaped. He made a wide sweeping motion with his outstretched hand and the troopers were knocked violently aside. He heard them noisily clamoring back to their feet as the door to the antechamber closed behind him.

His heart faltered in his chest when he opened the inner door and did not immediately see the girl. Movement to his right caught his eye and he turned to see her wrist deep in the fractured panel on the wall.

She had pulled on his discarded gloves to insulate her fingers from electric shock and was attempting to resplice the severed wires by hand. The too large gloves muddled her movements and was making a clumsy job of her work.

Something about this, the familiarity with which she handled- _fixed_ -his things, tripped a switch within him. He pulled his saber from his belt and ignited it.

The scavenger turned from her work, apparently startled. The jagged glass of the cracked screen caught a finger of one of his gloves and the thing pulled from her hand. Bright red blood stood on the tip of her first finger, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Say it again," Kylo demanded. The modulator in the mask had deteriorated further, causing his voice to come in static bursts. The girl's gaze was fixed on his crackling lightsaber, her eyes wide.

"Say what again?" she asked, her voice far away as she stared at what might kill her.

"Tell me again that you don't want to die."

She looked up at that and, for some reason, Kylo noticed a single drop of blood fall from her cut finger to the recently cleaned floor.

"I don't want to die."

He went to her, crowded her against the far wall as she stumbled away from him. As clumsy as if they were facing off again in the forest, in the snow. Her hand fumbled at the place where her weapon should be, though there was nothing there.

"Your life as you know it is over, scavenger. Either I kill you here, now, or you continue here with me. Either way, your life in the Light is done." He reached out a hand and tightly gripped her jaw. Her skin was hot beneath his bare hand and he wondered detachedly when he had last touched the skin of another person. "You can't go back. You won't be allowed to leave. I will show you what sacrifices come with making this choice and I will teach you what pain is."

He expected her to break, to crumble. He was echoing the words spoken to him by Snoke only minutes before, and he had been sick, and physically rejected the very idea. But she stood firm, tears shining in her eyes, and did not attempt to pull from his grasp.

He released her.

"Tell me that you don't want to die."

She tipped up her chin, and Kylo Ren felt the wild compulsion to reach out and touch her again. To pinch that sharp chin between his fingers and hold her in this defiant posture until the walls crumbled around them.

"I don't want to die."

He stepped away and extinguished his saber in one swift movement.

"Very well."

He replaced the hilt at his belt and reached to remove his helmet one last time for the night. When he looked back at the foolish girl still living and breathing not feet from him, she gasped at the sight of him. Worse still, she reached a hand toward him, as if to soothe him, as if to fix this hurt like she tried to fix the busted panel in his wall. With a snarl, he brushed past her outstretched hand and walked to the 'fresher.

Standing before the large mirror, he saw now the reason for her gasp. His lower lip was black with blood and bruising, yellow pockets of fat showing through in the deepest parts of the wound. His right eye was blood red from the capillaries bursting and the pupil was blown wide. That explained the blurred vision. He clenched his lips shut and exhaled, forcing air through the injury in his lip and spattering the mirror with blood. It hurt very much.

He then collapsed onto his forearms on the worktop in loud, angry tears.

* * *

It was some time before he was able to collect himself. Straightening his arms, he looked down at the mess his bleeding and blubbering had made of the countertop. He swiped a hand absently through the spit and gore and tears, only vaguely hearing the door to the fresher click closed.

The girl was holding out a towel, her face carefully blank. He considered her for a moment, the trouble this little nothing had caused him in the last hours. Thought of choking the life out of her or at least throwing her from the room. He thought again, only briefly, of pinching that stubborn chin in his fingers and angling her face to his.

He took the towel from her and wiped at his hands, then the counter. Once a section was clean enough, she set down a first aid kit and began to go through its contents.

"You use this a lot, I think," she said. Something in her quiet voice sent shame through him. As if she were afraid to set him off again. "There's hardly anything left in it."

His hands were planted again on the edge of the sink, his head hanging and his shoulders tense. The girl had heard him. The girl had seen him. How often was she to be witness to his weaknesses? How was it that he could seem to show her nothing but failures?

She suddenly reached for him, bacta smeared on her fingertips. He jerked sharply away from her and caught her wrist instead, squeezing just this side of too hard. Kylo swiped the ointment from her skin, its oily texture causing his fingers to glide smoothly over hers. He held on to her wrist as he applied it, wanting no other attempts at assistance. He hissed at the sensation of the bacta stitching his skin back together. It wasn't meant to be unpleasant, some even found the sensation euphoric, but skin healing that quickly always felt unnatural to him.

"You'll need a butterfly bandage to hold that closed, bacta or no."

He released her.

Kylo didn't answer, but grunted something like agreement. He took the bandage from her-at least she seemed done trying to touch him-and applied it the best he could, bringing the tender flesh back together. It would likely still scar, he thought, as he looked blandly at his wretched reflection.

"Did Snoke do that to you?"

His eyes darted to hers in the blood spattered mirror. "It's 'Supreme Leader' or 'Master,' scavenger."

She shook her head, that wide mouth tightening to a thin line. "He's not my master."

His lips twitched in what would be a smile if it didn't hurt so much. "He is now."

When he hadn't been looking, she had apparently applied more bacta to her fingers and was now smearing the stuff across his glass-shredded knuckles. He pulled his hand away.

"Will you stop doing that?" Kylo snapped. "Not every cut and scrape needs to be doctored away."

She ignored him and reached again for the tube of ointment. He snatched it from under her hand. He squeezed some of the greasy stuff out with a snarl and caught that reaching hand. He looked her boldly in the eye as he applied it to the cut on her first finger, though it was small and no longer bleeding. She looked slightly dazed as he did so, gasping at the cool tingle of bacta on her skin, and he noticed for the first time how her hair curled about her hairline, as fine as a child's.

"What-what," she started, licking her lips and searching his face for the answer to the question she was having trouble forming. "What did you say to Sn-to the Supreme Leader? What should I…" Her voice trailed off and her small hand moved in his. He hadn't realized he still held it, but now that he did, Kylo didn't think he could let it go.

"What now?" she breathed.

He took one more moment to look at her before answering. She was hard, but whole. Half starved, but sane. He wanted to remember the girl like this, as a person with her own mind and her own sense of determination, for as long as he could. It was easy to forget how things used to be, once your life was no longer your own.

"What do you know about the Knights of Ren?"


End file.
